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The authority said efforts were underway to rebuild generation capacity ahead of restoring service to all customers.
The major power outage comes one week after a previous blackout affected the same district on June 17, which left residents without power for 12 hours. At the time, WAPA said Unit 23 failed at 11:35 p.m. and caused all other units to trip, resulting in the blackout.
During a board meeting Thursday, WAPA Interim Executive Director Noel Hodge told board members a review of data continues to determine the circumstances leading up to the inability of the authority’s largest generator to sustain the fault and remain online. He said once the power plant lost all generation capacity, personnel were faced with a perfect storm of sorts, “several of our other ordinarily available units were simply not available to us last Thursday night and Friday morning.” Units 14 and 15 were sidelined by various mechanical issues from days prior and were being worked on. A leased unit, Unit 27, also failed to “black start” meaning there must be some other generation dispatching power already to the grid for that unit to be brought online.
“Personnel spent hours working on Unit 14, one of two units at the Harley Power Plant, that can not only black start but can synchronize to a dead buss,” Hodge explained. He said just as important as understanding the fault on Feeder 7E, we want to fully understand why Unit 23 failed once the electrical fault worked its way to the plant. “We are also looking at some short-term measures to provide us more flexibility to recover the power plant more efficiently once we have lost all generation and station service.”
WAPA hasn't given a timeline relative to when the latest major power outage is expected to be restored.
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